Page 429 - Deep Learning

412 Notes to Pages 65–73

25. Poincaré’s famous and oft-quoted essay, “Mathematical Discovery,” appears,
among other places, in Poincaré (1908/1952, pp. 46–63).
26. Simonton (1988, p. 7).
27. Finke, Ward and Smith (1992) and Smith, Ward and Finke (1995).
28. The nature and origin of the basic forms is not specified by Finke, Smith and
Ward but they could be taken to be the so-called geons of Biederman’s (1987)
theory of visual perception.
29. Weisberg (1986, p. 50). Weisberg’s position is difficult to pin down. Compare the
statement that “… there is no convincing evidence for the occurrence of insight
during creative thinking” (Weisberg, 1993, p. 67) with the statement that “it should
be emphasized that there is no question that all of us have ‘aha!’ experiences at
various times in our lives” (Weisberg, 1986, p. 36). For alternative formulations of
the “nothing special” view of creativity and insight, see Kaplan and Simon (1990),
Perkins (1981) and Usher (1929/1954).
30. Charles Darwin originally proposed his theory in 1859 in a book titled, The
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favored Races
in the Struggle for Life, commonly abbreviated as The Origin of Species (Darwin,
1859/2004). For an assessment of the current status of the theory, see Gould
(2002).
31. See, e.g., Campbell (1960), Koestler (1966), Pringle (1951) and Vincent (1993) for
different approaches to the analogy between evolutionary change and cognitive
change.
32. Campbell (1960).
33. There is evolutionary epistemology (Hahlweg & Hooker, 1989; Radnitzky &
Bartley, 1987; Wuketits, 1990) as well as evolutionary psychology (Barkow,
Cosmides & Tooby, 1992) and “universal Darwinism” (Cziko, 1995; Plotkin,
1994). There are variation-selection theories of artistic and scientific creativity
(Koestler, 1966), technological invention (Vincent, 1993), economic progress
(Hodgson, 1996; Nelson & Winter, 1982), the immune system (French, Laskov
& Scharff, 1989; Gazzinaga, 1992; Jerne, 1967), the history and philosophy of sci-
ence (Hull, 1990, 2001; Toulmin, 1972), brain function (Edelman, 1987; Sporns &
Tononi, 1994), the spread of items – “memes” – of popular culture (Aunger, 2002;
Blackmore, 1999; Brodie, 1996; Lynch, 1996) and yet other things (Gazzinaga,
1992).
34. See Amundsen (1989) and Perkins (1994, 1995a).
35. The principle of serendipity, of finding something else than what one was looking
for, is well established in creativity research. See Van Andel (1994) for origin, his-
tory, examples and patterns of serendipity. Meyers (2007) is a study of serendipity
in medical research. Roberts (1989) has compiled a list of examples of serendipity
in science, technology and medicine, some more convincing than others. The
serendipity principle does not claim that creative people proceed without any
goal, only that they did not have the goal of discovering what they in fact dis-
covered. There might nevertheless be a grain of truth in the former idea: Writes
wood sculptor David E. Rogers (2001): “Sometimes I begin to carve and the wood
itself dictates the form I carve; other times I start with a more independent idea”
(p. 53). Within psychology, Finke, Ward and Smith (1992) have proposed a